Is this the best Royals starting rotation ever?

Royals starting pitching has been a huge strength.

The Royals starting pitching has been a surprising strength of this team. After finishing with the fourth-worst starting pitcher ERA in baseball last year at 5.12, the Royals invested in free agents Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha, and relied on a full season of Cole Ragans and a massive bounceback from Brady Singer to improve their starting pitching ERA to 3.56 - better than every team but the Mariners. The improvement is the biggest reason why the Royals have their first shot at a post-season appearance in nine seasons.

The Royals have long prided themselves on building teams through pitching, but sometimes that has been easier said than done. The team was built on strong arms in the 1970s, and a rotation full of youngsters led them to a title in 1985. But the franchise found it harder to consistently develop starters after that, and even when they made their runs in 2014-15 it was the bullpen that got the headlines.

How does this starting rotation compare to past Royals rotations? Here are the top starting pitching ERAs in Royals history:

You can see a bit how the game has changed over time through this chart. Royals starters this year are on pace to finish with about 920 innings pitched, fewer than in any full season prior to 1992. But their strikeout rate will be the highest in club history, over twice what it was when they won division titles in 1976 and 1978.

Keeping in mind how the game has changed, some of these ERAs are a bit misleading. The 1960s and 70s were a deadball era, while the ball flew out of ballparks in the 90s and 2000s. Let’s take a look at Royals starting pitcher ERAs, and compare them to the league average.

The 1972 Royals had the lowest starting pitching ERA in club history, but only because the average MLB ERA that year was 3.23, a number so low the American League implemented the designated hitter rule the very next season. In comparison to the rest of the league, the 2024 Royals are the best pitching staff in Royals history, a full 17 percent better than league average (the worst team by this metric? The 2005 Royals had a starting pitching ERA of 6.00, over 27 percent worse than league average.)

But shouldn’t quantity matter? The game has changed and today’s starters aren’t pitching complete games at the rate Steve Busby and Dennis Leonard did in the 1970s (Leonard had 21 complete games in 1977 - all Royals starting pitchers have 20 complete games in the last decade combined).

Here are the top Royals starting pitching staffs by fWAR, taking into account innings pitched and how well they pitched.

The 2024 Royals are just off this list at 15.5, but they have a few weeks to go. If they finish at their current pace, they’ll finish with about 17.4 fWAR, good enough to tie the 1974 Royals for sixth on this list.

What do you think? Where does this year’s rotation rank among the Royals’ best? Who had the best starting pitching in Royals history?